What is "minimalism"

n. 1 (context arts English) A style of art that emphasises extreme simplicity of form. 2 (context music English) A style of music that emphasises extreme simplicity of rhythms and melodic forms to achieve a trancelike effect.

n. an art movement in sculpture and painting that began in the 1950s and emphasized extreme simplification of form and color [syn: minimal art, reductivism]

In the visual arts and music, minimalism is a style that uses pared-down design elements.

Minimalism in the arts began in post–World War II Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. It derives from the reductive aspects of Modernism and is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and a bridge to postminimal art practices.

Minimalism in music often features repetition and iteration such as those of the compositions of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and John Adams. The term minimalist often colloquially refers to anything that is spare or stripped to its essentials. It has also been used to describe the plays and novels of Samuel Beckett, the films of Robert Bresson, the stories of Raymond Carver, and the automobile designs of Colin Chapman. The word was first used in English in the early 20th century to describe "a 1913 composition by the Russian painter Kasimir Malevich of a black square on a white ground".

In computing, minimalism refers to the application of minimalist philosophies and principles in hardware and software design and usage.

The term minimalism may refer to:

• Minimalism (visual arts)
• Minimalism, in art and design
  • Minimalist music, a musical term
    • Holy minimalism
    • Minimal techno
• Simple living or Minimalist lifestyle
• Judicial minimalism, the United States judicial philosophy
• Minimalism (syntax), a theory of natural language syntax developed by Noam Chomsky in the 1990s
• Minimalism (Biblical archaeology), a school of archaeology of the Levant that gives priority to archaeological findings rather than the Biblical record
• Minimalism (technical communication), a theory of task-oriented and user-centered instruction and documentation
• Minimalism (computing), a philosophy of programming and configuring computers

Minimalism in structured writing or topic-based authoring is based on the ideas of John Millar Carroll.

Minimalism is about reducing the interference of the information with the user’s sense-making process. It is not about precluding users from ever making mistakes, but about assisting them to improve from the errors they will certainly make. An error, in fact, is the teachable moment that the content can exploit.

Like Robert E. Horn's work on Information Mapping, John Carroll's principles of Minimalism were based in part on cognitive studies and learning research at Harvard and Columbia University, by Jerome Bruner, Jerome Kagan, B.F. Skinner, George A. Miller, and others.

Carroll argued that training materials should be constructed as short task-oriented chunks, not lengthy monolithic user manuals that explain everything in a long narrative fashion.

The historian of technical communication R. John Brockmann points out that task orientation had been enunciated as a principle a decade earlier at IBM by Fred Bethke and others in a report on IBM Publishing Guidelines.

Carroll observed that modern users are often already familiar with much of what is described in the typical long manual. What they need is the information to solve the particular task at hand. They should be encouraged to do them with a minimum of systematic instruction.

Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is built on Carroll's theories of Minimalism and Horn's theories of Information Mapping.

Minimalism is a large part of JoAnn Hackos' recent workshops and books on information development using structured writing and the DITA XML standard.

Good writing means that the message is directly clear to the projected audience. Adopting a minimalist method may appear, in the short-term, to cost more as writers have to cut up and rephrase content into single free-standing chunks. However, in the longer-term there are real cost- saving benefits, particularly in the areas of translation and localization, where often sum is on a ‘per word’ basis. But the greatest advantage for companies is user fulfillment. The less time a customer spends working out how to do something, the more likely they are to purchase again in the future

Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts. As a specific movement in the arts it is identified with developments in post–World War II Western Art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with this movement include Ad Reinhardt, Tony Smith, Donald Judd, John McCracken, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Larry Bell, Anne Truitt, and Frank Stella. Artists themselves have sometimes reacted against the label due to the negative implication of the work being simplistic. Minimalism is often interpreted as a reaction against Abstract expressionism and a bridge to Postminimal art practices.